"A mesmerizing account of the well-known story of Matsyagandha
... and her transformation from
fisherman’s daughter to Satyavati, Santanu’s royal consort and the
Mother/Progenitor of the Kuru clan." - Hindustan Times

"Themes of fate, morality and power overlay a subtle and essential feminism to make this lyrical book a must-read. If this is Madhavan’s first book in the Girls from the Mahabharata series, there is much to look forward to in the months to come." - Open Magazine

"A gleeful dollop of Blytonian magic ... Reddy Madhavan is also able to tackle some fairly sensitive subjects such as identity, the love of and karmic ties with parents, adoption, the first sexual encounter, loneliness, and my favourite, feminist rage." - Scroll

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4 April 2016

Sofa Away From Me

It has been nearly a month since we shifted into our new home and still,
I haven’t been able to have a party of more than four or five people
over at a time. The reason? We have no sofa.

This may sound petty to you — certainly it’s reading a little petty to
me as I’m writing it — but being now of the age where folding oneself
onto the floor for longer than an hour or two leads to creaky hips and
aching backs (blame our sedentary lifestyles), I cannot, in all good
conscience force my guests to discomfort. Once, we had about 10 people
over and like a good hostess, I stayed standing while everyone got
dining chairs and by the end of the night, my knees ached with the
effort of holding me up for so long. And I do yoga regularly.

After many weeks scouring online websites and finding nothing exactly
perfect — eg: great shape, but too-delicate fabric, which wouldn't last a
week around our cats; nice colour, but a bit boxy looking;
prohibitively expensive for all its style — we decided to go the Indian
way and have the sofa commissioned and made from scratch. A craftsman
came recommended from a friend, we bought the yards of plain black
(apparently cat-proof) fabric, handed it over to him with an advance and
picked a design from his coffee table book catalogue. It was a
deceptively simple looking sofa, sleek and stylish with rounded arms and
comfortable enough for two people to lie, feet facing each other at the
end of a long day. We imagined narratives around it, eventually we will
acquire a projector and this will be the sofa on which we watch movies.
I imagined my stylish friends, in pretty shift dresses standing out
against the black fabric. I imagined the winter to come, how the sun
would hit it in just the right spot, me and a cat curled up for an
afternoon nap.

There are things in our new home I’ve never owned before: a dining table
that seats six and now a three-seater sofa, all indicating our couple-d
lives, a “we” instead of an “I.” I put furniture into terms I can
understand — like a set for a stage or a blank page of a Word document.
What scene are we setting? This is a house that will be full of people
we love. This is a house that will see us entertaining effortlessly.
This is a house where there is a comfortable nook in each room for two
readers to be alone together.

Unfortunately, the sofa maker didn’t see it that way. Proud as we were
of supporting local businesses and not going online (plus saving some
money), it seems to be an uphill task. His first photos (sent weeks
after the commission, despite my urging) were of a boxy black sofa.
Comfortable? Maybe. But not our original design. We edited, I wailed
down the phone, he sent back draft two: still not what we were waiting
for.

Finally, we sent him a drawing marking out exactly what needed fixing.
He claimed to understand, but also told me categorically that he wasn’t a
photographer. “Just come and sit on it, madam,” he said on the phone,
“You’ll see how comfortable it is.” Unfortunately, my Hindi does not
extend to the point where I can convey that comfort is all very well,
but it’s not the original sofa that we chose from his catalogue, one he
promised us he could make with no problems at all.

And that’s why small businesses in India seldom do very well to an
outside audience. For me, it’s par for the course, having grown up in
this country, I’m used to not having exactly what I want when I have
something made, but for my European partner, it’s sacrilege to pay
someone for a service he considers unrendered. And probably, if this
sofa ever gets made and we use it and then in five or 10 years time, we
consider replacing it, it’ll be the online route for us, just because
this was such a time-consuming project, all the calls and all the photos
and all the driving we have to do to his far away workshop, just to
explain to a professional that the sofa he made for us was not the sofa
he promised. (It’s not like his labour was cheap either.)

And therein lies the problem: he sees it as “good enough,” we see it as
“not what we wanted.” Will there always be this culture clash? And will
online and factory shopping eventually give the customers what they
want, so all these enterprising men will someday be history?